Joyce Carol Oates: A Study of Her Work and Writing Advice

Joyce Carol Oates, one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century—whose influence and magnitude has only continued to bleed into the 21st, seems to never stop writing. With over 50 novels published and countless works of poetry, short stories, and essays, Oates has contributed to a broad range of topics, from the reinvention of gothic literature (Bellefleur, 1980), a moving telling of the female experience (Solstice, 1985), to the struggle of America’s lower class amid the social turmoil of the 1960s (them, 1969). When diving into the world of Joyce Carol Oates, it can be difficult to know where to start. Her catalogue is extensive and—as she is still alive at 85-years-old—ever growing. Her most recent work called Zero-Sum, published in July of 2023, is a collection of short stories—her 47th, in fact.

She has taught at several universities, is currently at Princeton, and started a small press through which she published The Ontario Review with her husband, Ray Smith. While much of her past and present career include impressive feats, Oates’s most notable novels include them (1969), Bellefleur (1980), We Were the Mulvaneys (1996), Blonde (2000), The Gravedigger’s Daughter (2007), The Accursed (2013), The Book of American Martyrs (2017), and Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars (2020). Them went on to win the National Book Award in 1970.

Early Life & Inspirations

Joyce Carol Oates was born in rural upstate New York in 1938 in a town which had seen many difficulties due to the Great Depression. She became fascinated with nature and spent much of her time wandering the outdoors and appreciating the scenic environment around her.

At the age of 14, her grandmother gifted her a typewriter and Oates began to write. From this point on she never stopped. She graduated at the top of her class from Syracuse University with an English degree in 1960 and earned her M.A. in just one year from the University of Wisconsin—Madison in 1961. Her earliest published works are from this period of her life, and she’s gone on to win many prestigious awards in her career and has been nominated on multiple occasions for the Pulitzer Prize.

Oates describes her family as a supportive bunch who encouraged her to write. During an interview with the Academy of Achievement—Oates was inducted in 1997—she explains that her family, specifically her mother and father had a very difficult time growing up during the Great Depression. Oates explains that while some may have given in to the hardships faced during those times, her parents’ answers to those trials, and the impression that “their resilience, their good spirits, [and] their courage” had, has stuck with her throughout her career and personal experiences.

The world Oates grew up in was one of working class people in rural America. She was surrounded by a hardworking population concerned with working through the day and getting by in day-to-day life. It was just a little later in life that Oates began to apply her intellectualism to the everyday life of her surroundings.

From an early age in her life, Oates has been inspired by the works of William Faulkner, Ernest Hemmingway, Henry David Thoreau, and Eugene O’Neill. She began reading intensely and writing at the age of 14 and has talked about the impression that Thoreau’s Walden has on her. She reminisces on the similarities between Thoreau and her father, and her thought process growing up with Walden in mind. However, she admits that while Walden was very impressionable to her younger self, life has since swayed into a more “confused” state than a simplified one.

Most Notable Works

A significant reasoning behind Joyce Carol Oates’ popularity, besides her broad expanse of work, is her emphatic understanding of the human experience. Her short stories accurately express joy and tribulations that come with the experience of a person trying to survive with the cards they’ve been dealt. In her short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” originally published in 1966, the main character is 15-year-old Connie. Connie has two sides to her personality: a side she explicitly falls into when she’s with family: argumentative, stubborn, tempered, and the side she displays when amongst her friends: flirtatious, seemingly mature, explorative. She’s the perfect matrix of a teenage girl in a world where it’s difficult to find where you best fit.

In the beginning of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” Connie and her friends are out at night in town and they’re flirting with boys and participating in what Connie perceives to be grown-up, mature behavior. She is free to do what she pleases. When with her friends, Connie sees life with almost no restrictions and possesses the ability to act like that. But by the end of the story, Connie is bottle-necked into that version of herself she becomes when around her family. Confronted outside of her home by a strange man, Arnold Friend, Connie has to quickly decide which girl she will personify. She knows that these will be her last moments either way after listening to what Arnold claims he will do. It’s representative of real events happening at the time of publication, and even now, is accurate to the life experiences of young girls.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing a young girl walk through life carelessly, but upon closer inspection of Connie’s characterization, Oates pushes forward the internal monologue of a dark world that waits and preys on the naïve. The fearfulness and shroud of wickedness and corruption that comes to light in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” is also present in Oates other works like her 1969 novel, them, and her Wonderland Quartet, a fiction finalist for the National Book Award in 1972.

Oates as a writer transcends genre. Her ability to understand such a broad range of topics perhaps come from her childhood, watching her parents forge ahead despite hard times. Or maybe it comes from her ability to observe everything around her, to be able to put into words what others simply see. Oates has refined what it means to be a writer over her decades long career, and even in the present day she is changing the landscape with every novel, poetry, and essay she writes.

Them, winner of the 1970 National Book Award, was published amongst and inspired by the social turmoil rampant in America throughout the sixties. Oates drew inspiration directly from living in Detroit and one of her students at the University of Detroit, who she based the character Maureen Wendall on. Them is a world of rage and its characters find themselves facing obstacles left and right with no peace in sight. The Wendall family are deep in the throes of society spanning from 1937 to 1967, a time period that Oates herself was born into.

Following the perspectives of the family members, they are a diverse bunch, each with varying and disagreeing views of their circumstances. The explosive history of these few decades are increasingly present throughout the novel and it ends amidst the social and political movements and racial injustices of the sixties.

Advice for Writers

While Joyce Carol Oates has published many stories of all kinds, she still finds that all stories start with some kind of feeling. It’s this feeling that then turns into a needing to tell that story, and the hard part, she says, is trying to put that story into a language. Everyone has those stories, but it’s the artists of the world that have the impulse to communicate them. Oates possesses this impulse. Oates merely writes the truths she sees.

Her inspiration comes from many things, places, people, really anywhere she can find something. Oates recounts running through her neighborhood, up a hill, and says she knows when she reaches the top of the hill—it’s filled with grass and cattle and fresh air—that ideas will be waiting for her. And the structure for a story will start to form.

Oates sails beyond the trap that some writers seem to fall into, sticking with one genre throughout their whole career. Her style can be described as accessible and digestible, while still being intellectual. This is what makes her one of the greats. She’s willing to share what some would consider secrets, but Oates is all too willing. She wants writers to succeed. She wants to see people get their thoughts on the page, and she’s willing to help. Her openness is easy to gravitate towards and her advice is conversational and warm. It’s refreshing and non-pretentious while holding on to the grandness that her ethos exhibits.

Oates is honest and her writing shows it. This may be off putting to some, but it’s just naturally part of her brand. If she wants to write about a topic she does so unapologetically. Her craft is based on honesty and follows her in every work that is published. There is nothing taboo in the world of Oates because everything is just a part of life. There is nothing to hide because in the real world—and remember, the real world is what Oates writes about—everything just exists, and Oates brings it upon herself to explain it.

And although her catalogue is impressive, Oates is no stranger to stagnation. In her own words, Oates is “very deeply inculcated with a sense of failure.” Her advice on this sort of road block is to keep writing. Change the subject of what you’re writing. She says you’re writing should have the ability to flow out of you, that your pen cannot be silenced the way your brain may be trying to persuade you.

Throughout the many interviews she’s given, and tips she’s tweeted, this is Oates’s main piece of advice: keep writing. This is the best method for writing something of substance. You have to start somewhere, and in order to write something good you’ll have to start with something bad. If it’s bad, and it will be, keep trying to find new paths to something good. During her 1997 interview with the Academy of Achievement, Oates declares that writing is “like a lifeline.” She speaks of thinking and cultivating ideas until the right one meshes with her brain. It needs to fit and you’ll have to perhaps take on specific perspectives until it does.

As much passion as she has for writing, it’s clear that Oates also has a passion for guiding young and old writers alike. Writing advice from Oates can be found all over the place as she is more than willing to dole it out in a series of 2013 tweets, or through her MasterClass, or on her own blog posts published on her Substack. Among these, viewers can find statements which go one step further than the advice usually given to writers. It’s witty, it’s unflinching, it’s unapologetically Oates.

Oates acknowledges that real life is the basis for all writing. It’s her opinion that witnessing life events and using them as inspiration for our writing is one of the most important and fundamental things you could as a writer. Use language to serve you in creating new ways to understand the ups and downs of society and push your thoughts onto the page, let them flow freely, and don’t worry about hitting a certain number.

Oates describes her writing to be about the “aftermath” of violence. She has, countless times, been penned the question: “why is your writing so violent?” It’s a question that’s been left unanswered until Oates wrote a piece, which is now archived, for the New York Times that was published in 1981.

Ultimately, Oates finds the question almost unbearable. Her reasoning? The inquiry is never made to men. It’s almost never pinned on men to answer for why they write on any of the terrible and cruel things that happen in this world. A favorite quote from the piece: “War, rape, murder and the more colorful minor crimes evidently fall within the exclusive province of the male writer, just as, generally, they fall within the exclusive province of male action.” Oates considers her writing to be experimental and she’s made it known on several occasions of her contest over claims that published works written by a woman should focus on something other than social-philosophical issues.

When Joyce Carol Oates is described, she’s said to be open, thoughtful, and rarely backs down from what she really thinks. Her home and style have been described as exactly how I would think them to be. It’s imaginative, it’s light and airy, refined with color and texture, and brimming with personality. Oates is very much not concerned with knowing just how many words she’s written in a single day or exactly how many works she has published in the last 50 years or so of her career. She is solely concerned about what her current projects are, and perhaps that is the secret to her success. She’s unbothered by these types of statistics and usually waves away these numbers with a casual swing of her hand. Even now, when filling out paperwork, Oates jots down “professor” instead of “writer” on forms. Oates’s attitude about these trivial facts are strengthened by her conviction that writing is simply a way of life, not her job.